The Man Game (33 page)

Sammy watched her tusk-handled hairbrush slide down her hair, smooth as a night's river for that ivory boat. He was enamoured of her. Her long black waters shone in the candlelight against the buttery stone of her tilted neck. The hairbrush was decorated with a maple leaf. He saw his country against her nape, where he alone ought be pressed. Even the inanimate left him jealous.

He was lying on his side in bed, facing her, and just a glimpse out the window. Until she came to bed, this was how he preferred to lie. It was how Toronto set him up at the end of the day, unless Molly was already asleep, in which case Toronto sidled his crippled body in edgewise and laid him on his back with a thin pillow under his head.

She placed her brush beside the silver cuticle wedge on the doily. Also on her bureau was a framed photograph of her and Sammy on their wedding day. Two things about the picture he never failed to notice were how terribly beautiful she was in her bridal gown and that he, her husband, was not yet crippled. Tall man. Upon reflection, he could see that he had a certain handsomeness in his stature. Foolish to hate himself. He distracted his mind with the soft seam of an undergarment creeping out
her dresser drawer. The perfume of her. The salmon glint of her nightdress moving against her flesh. Mustn't sink into the horror, the horror of himself, the horror that even suicide was impossible. Her gaze drew back from her reflection to his outline in the mirror while she tilted her head to remove each earring. She smiled. He smiled back, without sign of horror. She would soon be in bed. He could see her daub on the creamy white face creams that came from shallow tortoiseshell cups there beyond the wedding photo. Don't be so jealous, he told himself, you're her husband.

She moved through the room without even so much as a hint. She sat on the side of the mattress tugging at the frilly ends of her white nightie as he looked out the window for hints in the sky of something, anything, an image of his future in the clouded darkness. Her white nightie. Her white skin. Like light shining through a pristine sheaf of paper. Beguiling picots of thread dangled against her calves where her nightie ended, adorned with pearls or was it his imagination? No, his imagination, but still.

Should we sleep? he asked her.

She didn't answer, she pressed a hand across the coverlet and took a breath. Her back was to him.

What's wrong? he asked.

Nothing. I'm just tired.

The window looked out over the freely ranging wolves, the dangers of everything not domestic, the physical world. She collapsed her head against his chest, and began to weep.

Love; his palate leaped and his tongue thickened in his mouth. He exclaimed: Oh, darling Chinook, what is it? But did he want to know the answer, or did he only want her attention? What's the matter? he asked in a bruised whisper. She held him, body so close so very close beneath the thin nightie, the snowy caps of her vertebrae against the silk, the wintry smell of her hair furled under his chin.

It's nothing, she said. I'm fine.

She sniffed, lifted her chin, and petted her nose on a white knuckle. She blinked, then to look in his eyes, she
turned and smiled for mercy. Oh, darling, he said. The smile faded at the sound of his voice. She quieted, her breathing, her pulse, her air. She was suddenly absent. He said again: Dear Chinook, what's the matter?

She gazed at him as though he wasn't even there, right through him to the wall or something beyond him, or her mind's inner wall maybe, but she kissed his chin wetly, and then his lips, wetly, and she was still in tears when she pushed him down and saddled on top of him in the bed in the night not talking not speaking so quiet aside from her sobs and kisses on his many numb spots while she undressed him a little further and a little further until the cold moist air and her fear made his nosetip tingle, not wanting to stop and consider what was happening or why, but to just let it, let her, let himself, be, again, if possible, seduced.

As if talking to someone in a dream, she asked her husband: How old are you? with a quivering voice, her neck stretched out and chin up, her mouth cold to the kiss from a draught coming from the window, —and her belly, a blueberry in the night's light.

I'm never old when I'm with you, he said.

You're always so old. Can you feel anything?

Nothing, not a tingle.

Tell me what's happening …

We …

No, don't tell me.

The wind started before dawn. Sammy awoke. She stirred. A giant boom so loud it shook the loose boards of the porch, startled the house. She stirred awake. He watched Molly's eyes unlatch and open. Fishermen, he thought, listening to the echo decay across the inlet. It was the signal to start the day's fishing. Just beyond his view he knew fishing boats were creaking off into the inlet, and the same
thing happening down in Steveston where the fattest smelt swam. He listened with disinterest to the intestinal groan of the cedar floats paying out over the gunwales of the tugs, the floats separating in the scupple of the waves and blooming with nets. The line used was of the best hemp, slightly vapoured with tar, not impregnated with it. All those fishing boats, they scooped salmon by the thousands, even when the canneries' limit per boat might some days be as low as a hundred fifty. Sometimes the beaches below Hastings Mill were strewn with carcasses idling in the waves of the tide. The air stank with their rot. Some mornings he wished he could sleep forever. He was afraid to wake up, but something soulfully prompted him; daft love. He said her name: Molly.

Before he knew it the city was quiet again, the fleet awaiting its gather of fish. She stirred but did not wake. He went inside himself and stood at the window in his mind's kitchen, made coffee, and meditated on the view.

A minute later he was still in bed, almost too warm. With latent desire he studied the pressure of the blood coursing through her jugular. Her pulse was steep. It fluttered the skin of her neck and cheek as the blood surged up behind her ear. For a while he contemplated what could be going on between her gorgeous ears, inside her intimidating and inscrutable head. She was asleep, all the better. Was she, in dreams, contemplating him, the way he, in torment, contemplated her? Was it all love?

He heard January spit on his roof. It was a new day, a new year, and all that, but it was still dank, and the forecast was for more dankness in the weeks to come.

She turned to face him, smiling with contentment, stretched and squeaked, and said: I love you.

He said: I love you, too. I was just thinking about how much I love you. I wish I could go back in time and love you from the moment of your birth. I wish I could experience all that you have experienced, to love you more completely.

I want to go back in time to give you the first banana you ever ate, she said.

He laughed. He said: I want to go back in time to leave a chocolate at every corner you walk past, for your entire life.

I want to go back in time and find your first kiss and steal it.

When Toronto returned from errands, they all drank coffee and ate Calabi&Yaus in the living room. The Calabi&Yaus were fresh and soft as mousse. Chocolate with banana. Blackberry jam and cream cheese icing. Cheddar with raspberries. Maple-dusted confection of the gods. This Byzantine shapelet of marbled pastry. This outrageous delight. Toronto fed Sammy bite by bite. Molly blew on her coffee and drank it black. In effect, this was 1887. It was pointless to argue. Take your bites and leave as little as you can for the next.

At some point she stood and opened a drawer and removed a tin of her cigarettes, popped the cover, extracted, lit, and smoked a fresh Stars & Stripes. Smoke went aloft in the still morning air, hovered, and in a moment of poetic contemplation he imagined it as another of the sails he could hear distantly crack and flutter. He asked her why she did it. His whisper didn't even startle her. She told her husband that she wanted to
inspire the bohunk
.

Silas and Ken competed for a still unknown (to Minna and me) objective. Ken struggled to instigate a different move among Silas's knife-hand throat chops. Ken ducked, spun on his right heel, knocked Silas off balance, handstanded up and pushed off and landed on his feet. Silas accomplished the same feat, only with his legs over his head, swinging up and over and tripped, pivoted, alley-ooped and landed just a few yards from his opponent. Then, with dustpowder upturned behind his steps, we watched Silas charge Ken and force him through an aggressive kind of New York cha cha,
every step so trippingly tight that bare millimetres separated each ankle
{see
fig. 8.1
}
.

Whoa, said I.

Eek, said Minna, squirming with pleasure. What a move, she said.

Ken was the one to crumple. A paff of dirt rose quickly at his fall and settled around his head. It didn't look good. It looked like 911. Something about the angle of his neck said 911. I can't say it looked like a death blow that Silas had dealt there. But at the end of this impressive wheeling catenate came a splendid calm … and then worry, and our eyes for an instant grasped the retreating motions of Silas away from the loser's crumpled body, and just as quickly we returned to the body, for the first time seeing that the possibility was officially in the air that Ken was dead, and that Silas was a murderer. This was how it felt at the instant when things went from good to bad. The core body temperature in the yard rose and fell in sync as we all waited for signs of life from Ken, there on the ground.

Minna laughed despite all the drama. I needed her amusement to hide my anxiety.

And then finally I heard Ken wring the last bubbles of air from his lungs and inflate his chest again with a giant sucking fatigued wheeze. He was deeply, utterly winded, but not dead. The game was over. His gasps were huge. His eyes were completely bugged out and cracked with blood as he gasped for air while we applauded. Ken was being held up by fans because he kept doubling over to catch his breath. Coughing, with thick ropes of saliva dangling off his lips, he finally fell to his knees, wheezing at the ground. Silas watched him without enough compassion. The idea of calling an ambulance started to circulate through the crowd after I posed the question to Cedric and someone overheard me. Eventually the idea was passed on to Ken that he should seek immediate medical assistance.

FIGURE 8.1
Rook Takes Pawn, alternative sketch

See Calabi's commentary on
p. 10
.

No ambulance, wheezed the defeated between gagging pukes.

Death, I said. I don't want to see it today.

You won't, said Cedric.

I saw bruises and welts as they appeared like rainclouds. Not to mention the gashes and blood, and now the filthy brown-speckled line of vomitous spittle up Ken's cheek, the bleak winter clay trapped in the plentiful hairs on Silas's chest as they started to walk around shaking out their limbs, looking very tired, slouching way over, necks out like invalids. This was as bad as it looked.

It's theatre, said Cedric. Ever seen theatre?

That's fake blood? I asked.